Research On The Impact Of Belief In A Just World And Sense Of Control On Green Consumption

Green consumption is an important way for environmental protection,and it is a special pro-social behavior.Previous studies have shown that the belief in a just world can affect the prosocial behaviors of individuals.The people with a high level of belief in a just world have higher altruistic tendency and are more willing to participate in environment protection related activities.Former studies have found that perceived control can predict an individual’s environmental behavior,because individuals work to protect the environment only when they think their actions will improve the environment.Green consumption includes green consumption attitude and green consumption behavior,and previous studies found that the belief in a just world and perceived control both affect green consumer behavior through green consumer attitude.Therefore,this study focused on relationship these variables and investigated the influence of the belief in a just world and perceived control on green consumption.Individuals’ belief in a just world was also affected by social events,thus it was necessary to investigate the differences in green consumption when subjects’ belief in a just world were under threated or acknowledgement condition.This study included two parts,the first part employed belief in a just world scale,perceived control scale,green consumer behavior questionnaire,green consumer attitude questionnaire,to measure the level of just world belief,perceived control and green consumption of 1386 college students from five universities in Nanjing,and finally got 1237 effective questionnaires.The second part was an independent-groups design based on 98 subjects,in which the belief in a just world was taken as the independent variable(threat/certain/control),the dependent variable was the propensity to purchase green goods and the willingness to participate in environmental protection activities.This study concluded with the following findings:(1)Correlational studies showed that,the belief in a just world and green consumer behavior,green consumer attitude was significantly and positively correlated with each other.Perceived control was positively correlated with both the belief in a just world and green consumer attitude at a significant level.(2)Green consumer attitude plays a partial mediation role between belief in a just world and green consumer behavior.Perceived control plays a moderation role in the relationship between the belief in a just world,green consumer attitude and green consumer behavior.(3)In the situational experiment,subjects their belief in a just world was under threat their preferences for hedonic good,but certainly the belief in a just world groups tend to buy green product.However,the threat groups was more willing to participate in environmental activities than the control group,and there was no significant difference between the threat group and the certainly groups.Conclusions:(1)Individuals with different levels of belief in a just world and perceived control have different green consumer attitude and green consumer behavior.Individuals with high level of belief in a just world and perceived control have better green consumer attitude and green consumer behavior.(2)The belief in a just world influences the individual’s green consumer behavior through the mediation role of green consumer attitude.The perceived control play a moderation role in this process.The stronger individual’s perceived control,the more able to predict the green consumer behavior through the individual’s fair world belief.(3)When the individual’s belief in a just world is threatened,it tends to purchase hedonic goods and obtain instant gratification;when the individual’s belief in a just world is affirmed,it tends to purchase environmentally friendly goods and practice green consumption.